Advertising Mount Everest

When Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953, they ended a decades-long race to scale the mountain – and started a much more immediate race to get the news out to the world.

This was famously won by James Morris from the London Times, who was embedded in the expedition and actually on the mountain. Through guile, Nepali Sherpa runners and the discovery of an Indian Army outpost with radio transmitter at Namche Bazaar, the village closest to the foot of the mountain, Morris sent a message that reached the outside world on June 1, in perfect time to hit the headlines on June 2, the day of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Morris, who would later become the travel writer Jan Morris, had always been the most likely to make the scoop, but there was also a large group of reporters waiting in Namche Bazaar. To bypass them, the message was sent in code, which only conveyed the ascent had been completed and who were the mountaineers. That was the basis on which most papers, like The Times of India, carried a rather sour report from Reuters on June 2 stating: “Mount Everest has been conquered according to a copyright message published in the London ‘Times’ today.”

It is some measure of how hostile the terrain was, and how difficult communications were at that time. Till then most papers must have done what ToI did – fill in with general details about Everest, the few details known about the men (Hillary was a bee-keeper, informed Keki F Bunshah on June 7) and stories about preparations for the climb. On June 13, an Indian Air Force B-24 Liberator flew over the mountain and took some stunning images, which helped fill the gap before detailed accounts of the climb emerged.

Along with the race for news there was a side race for the first ads linked to the ascent. This wasn’t exactly a race since it was always possible for a general ad to have been kept waiting for first news of any ascent – which is exactly what seems to have been done with an ad in ToI on June 3 for SAS airlines that read: “29,000 feet without wings… A feat of Tremendous Endurance, but there’s no endurance needed when flying high with SAS”.

But the next day an ad appeared with an authentic link to the expedition. Rolex had been supplying watches to expeditions linked to Mount Everest since 1933 and it made sure it would be part of a final triumph. Along with the reporters waiting on the lower flanks of the mountain there was an ad man – Ayaz Peerbhoy from J Walter Thompson, who would later go on to head the coincidentally named Everest Advertising, before leaving to start Marketing Advertising Associates, the agency still headed by his son, Bunty Peerbhoy. “After my father was assigned the Rolex account he went abroad to work on it, but came back for the Everest expedition,” says the Bangalore-based Peerbhoy junior.

Peerbhoy had no mountaineering experience, but Anwar Alikhan, executive creative director, JWT Mindset, says he told him he wangled his way onto Everest with the help of a press accreditation pass obligingly supplied by Mumbai’s Free Press Journal. It is possible that the first two ads in the series, on June 4 and 8, had been substantially prepared in advance since they carefully avoid specific details and use general images of the mountain. Peerbhoy’s role would have been to signal it was OK to proceed with the ad – for example, if there had been a disaster on the climb, Rolex would not have wanted to release it.

The real coup in the campaign came on June 27 when a dramatic front page ad in ToI showed the image taken by Hillary of Tenzing standing on the summit holding a flag and looking slightly spooky because of the oxygen masks they both needed by that stage. This was to be the iconic image of the ascent, and its first appearance in the paper was in this Rolex ad, which simply said below: “On Top… Ever since the watch came into being ROLEX has always been ON TOP.” And as a sign-off, readers were reminded that The Everest Conqueror Relied on a Rolex, which they could get for just Rs 500!

Peerbhoy must have written the final ad that came on June 30, a classic long copy ad spread across six columns below a wide image of the mountain. The ad explained why the Rolex Oyster with its perpetual selfwinding mechanism was the only one which could have stood up to the rigours of the ascent. Colonel Hunt, the leader of the expedition, was quoted saying that the watches kept time accurate to the second, which “ensured that synchronisation of time between the members of the team was maintained throughout”.

Rolex must have been highly satisfied with the campaign and Peerbhoy’s role in it. “They made a few special watches, carved out of a single block of gold, to mark the occasion,” recalls Bunty Peerbhoy. “One was presented to Tenzing, one to the King of Nepal – and one to my father.” It was his most treasured possession until one day he presented it to his son.

Bunty Peerbhoy recalls what happened when he took it to the authorised Rolex outlet to have a new strap made for it: “I could see the staff talking among themselves, and then finally the manager came out and asked how I had this watch. When I explained my father had given it to me, he asked who my father was and would I mind if they called him to check!”

Peerbhoy says whenever he has taken the watch for servicing to Rolex outlets in different parts of the world, he has received a similar reaction (presumably minus the call to his father!) “I still wear my father’s Rolex,” says Peerbhoy, 60 years after Ayaz Peerbhoy earned it with such an exceptional feat of ad timing.